


i never want to leave you (but i can't make you bleed if i'm alone)

by 26stars



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Season 2, a little hurt/comfort, but mostly just helping each other forward, skye's powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 16:18:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16559036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/26stars/pseuds/26stars
Summary: What might have happened if May had actually gotten to visit Skye at the Retreat in season 2b. No 'real SHIELD', no Afterlife. Just two resilient women and the weirder world.For the prompt: May+Daisy+warmthTitle from "Arms" by Christina Perri





	i never want to leave you (but i can't make you bleed if i'm alone)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [agentmmayy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentmmayy/gifts).



> Whether you ship this pair or not, who isn’t pissed that we never got to see May visit Skye at the cabin back in season 2? I'll never forget that that's when their relationship started to fall apart in canon, so here's my fix-it.
> 
> N, your prompt at first had me leaning towards s5 and these two having a moment in space/the bunker together (I bet neither place was warm), but I just can’t force myself into the angst of s5 yet. So here’s some no-‘real-SHIELD’, no-Afterlife “what-if” fluff/angst for us, right in my salty wheelhouse of s2. Hope you enjoy!

Skye scrapes the last bit of pancake over her plate, chasing the remaining honey still stuck to the ceramic. At her elbow, May’s plate is almost empty too, but when she reaches for the last pancake from the pan resting on a towel on the table between them, she places it on Skye’s plate instead of her own.

“I’m good,” Skye says, spearing the pancake on her fork and trying to put it on May’s plate instead. May blocks the movement easily, picking up her empty plate to carry it to the sink.

“Eat it. You’ve lost weight since Puerto Rico.”

Skye feels the tiniest bit affronted at the patronizing tone, but if there’s anyone responsible for noticing and commenting, it’s her S.O.

 _Can you call her your S.O. even if you’re not an active agent anymore?_ Skye thinks dryly, forcing another bite into her mouth.

She’s been stuck out at the Retreat only for a couple of days, since she shattered the bones in her arms, but it already feels like months since she last helped her team with the mission in Portugal, and like years since Puerto Rico.

May returns to the table with the kettle in order to add more water to her tea, then takes Skye’s coffee cup to return it refilled.

“Thanks,” Skye mutters as May sits down at her elbow again. She keeps her eyes down, finishing her breakfast, but she still doesn’t raise her head once her plate is empty and she sets her fork down.

She hasn’t been able to look May in the eye yet.

“How everyone doing back at base?” she asks, risking a scalding sip from her mug.

“Same as always,” May answers, leaning back in her own chair and sipping her own tea. “Busy and anxious.”

“You should consider offering a group tai chi class,” Skye attempts, clumsily turning over her fork with her casted hand.

“That’s first on the agenda for us today.”

Skye finally looks up at May, slightly surprised. May doesn’t have a trace of humor in her expression, but when does she ever?

“But…” Skye doesn’t finish the sentence, just raises her casted arms pointedly.

May only cocks an eyebrow. “Tai chi has never been a contact sport. And you need it now more than ever.”

Skye lowers her arms, biting her lip.

“Are you sure?”

_Are you sure you want to try this?_

May doesn’t look away. “Are you not?”

_What exactly is it that you’re afraid of?_

Skye looks down. “I don’t know.”

She knows that answers May’s question.

“We have to start somewhere,” May says quietly, her hands still resting fearlessly near Skye’s on the table. “I know you don’t want to stay here forever, and I know you don’t want to hurt anyone else, but I don’t want you to hurt yourself again.”

“This wasn’t your fault,” Skye says quietly, knowing May is probably hating herself for this anyway. “Neither of us have a clue what we’re doing.”

Even around the hair hanging in her face, she can see May’s hands go slightly tense.

“Do you still trust me?”

The question is so surprising that Skye looks up, her brow pinching.

“What? God, May, of course,” she says, her hand drifting briefly towards May’s before she sets it down deliberately again on the table. “Don’t ever think otherwise.”

But May only nods, waving the conversation closed and getting to her feet. She crosses to the door and picks up one of the duffel bags she’d brought with her this morning, carrying it outside.

“Come find me when you’re ready.”

Not _when you’re done with your coffee._

Not _when you’re finished sulking._

_When you’re ready._

About half an hour later, Skye is.

They stay out of the house for most of the day. Tai chi beneath the cedars, followed by a long walk around the premises while May asks her a surprising number of questions, and none are about her powers. Most of them are about Skye herself.

_What’s the first thing that comes to mind when I ask ‘what are you afraid of?’_

_Have you ever felt helpless?_

_What makes you feel strong?_

_What are you most proud of in your life?_

Had they been coming from a stranger, or even from a doctor, Skye might have bristled at the interrogation and kept her answers shallow and unhelpful.

But even if some of the questions sound like they’re pulled straight from an intake assessment, it doesn’t feel like Skye’s words are going in one ear and out onto a psych eval. Because this is _May_ , her S.O. who has been so spare with their personal exchanges throughout the past year, now trying to fill in the gaps. They’ve touched on some of these things before, when circumstances would pull to the surface something in Skye’s past (like when they were two months into training and Skye had been forced to admit that she didn’t know how to swim and was scared of water when she couldn’t see the bottom. May had started teaching her how the following week but had never asked Skye to explain further). May of course knows about her visible background—abandoned 084, career foster child, teenage runaway, Rising Tide hacker—but these questions are diving far deeper.

And for some reason, Skye doesn’t mind.

They eat outside that afternoon too, packages of finger foods and bags of fresh fruit passed back and forth across a blanket that appears from May’s duffel. Sunlight filters through the branches and warms them enough that their jackets are discarded, and Skye enjoys the feeling of the sunshine on her bruise-mottled arms, even if May is obviously pained by the sight of her healing injuries. Lying beside each other afterwards, staring up at the swaying treetops, May asks different questions.

“What does it feel like inside you when things are shaking outside of you?”

These questions come slower, like May is always forming the next one in light of Skye’s previous answer. They aren’t questions Dr. Garner, or even Jemma, knew how to ask, questions clearly seeking the connections, however small, between Skye and everything that her powers have accomplished so far.

And finally, a lightbulb comes on.

“What if I’m not just making things shake?” she says, rubbing her thumb softly over the ridges of a pinecone she’d picked up on their walk. Inside her grip, she senses something different than the earth beneath her, different than the cedar above them, different than the person beside her. She thinks of the gun that had exploded in her hand in a hospital in Lisbon. The room had shaken then too, but besides her arms, that was the most focused her powers had been. She thinks of the water from the kitchen sink the other night, the way it had formed a new shape as she’d thought about how nice it felt on her aching arms…

Skye feels May look over at her, and she sits up slowly, studying the pine cone again.

“What if…”

She focuses.

Three seconds later, the pine cone explodes.

They’re quiet afterwards for a long moment, and then May slowly sits up next to her.

“What did it feel like when you did that?”

This time, when they walk around the grounds, Skye pays more attention to everything. She touches everything she can get her hands on, feeling the differences with a sense she didn’t have two weeks ago. The dull roar that had filled her head since Puerto Rico finally begins to resolve into…chords. Each thing has a different…sound, for lack of a better word. Something she can hear, or feel, or something…

She doesn’t try to _do_ anything with this knowledge until May has led her back around to the pond in front of the cabin.

“What can you do with the water?”

Skye wants to protest automatically, but now she’s too curious to follow through.

She crouches down next to the water and dips her fingers in, reminding herself of its sound. Then, she focuses.

She’s not sure how to describe what happens next. The pond responds as if a giant stone has been plunged into its surface at her fingers, suddenly surging up and outwards in a startling wave. Skye yelps in surprise and tumbles backwards into May, who manages to get her to her feet and a safe distance back before the rebounding wave surges back to their side of the pond.

Skye watches for a few breathless seconds before cautiously glancing over at May. The woman seems a little overwhelmed too, but there’s an impressed smile on her lips.

“Nice job.”

There are more experiments to be done after that—Skye tries to fine-tune her actions on the objects, to make the effects smaller. Her first attempt at a dead tree sends them both diving for cover when it explodes, but when she tries again on its remaining stump, she’s able to crush it into the ground instead. As she separates out the threads of sound around her, she eventually realizes one she’s overlooked as a breeze makes the trees rock above them.

“It’s the air,” she whispers, spreading her fingers at her sides and feeling its caress. “I can hear the air.”

This one is a game-changer.

She makes May wait on the other side of the vibranium house when she tries it the first few times, afraid that if she’s wrong, anything in her radius could be damaged. After a few attempts at grasping the unfamiliar element, she focuses harder.

Trees in every direction creak.

She raises one hand and focuses in a single direction.

A tree splits in half.

But it’s the only one.

They find different ways to play with this one over the rest of the afternoon. Pushing small objects off the path ahead of them. Making the wind chimes on the porch dance manically and the wings of the quinjet flap like a bird’s. Briefly parting the water of the pond like the freaking Red Sea.

When they finally traipse back into the house at sundown for dinner and rest, Skye sees her bottle of painkillers sitting on the table and tries to remember when she’d last taken one. For the first time since Wisconsin, her arms don’t ache.

May is building up the fire in the fireplace, so Skye waits until she has it burning merrily again and the room is filling with light and warmth before crossing the room and pulling May into a tight, wordless hug.

It doesn’t hurt at all.


End file.
